By Alan on Aug 14 in Daily Inspiration tagged family life, proclamation, The Family | Comments Off

Now, if THAT don’t explain it, nothing will!!!!!!!!….

The Family

Happiness in Family Life

is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.”

  ~ The Family: A Proclamation to the World ~

By Alan on Jun 15 in Blog tagged alan, Alan and Suzanne osmond, army lead, as He did, barrack, challenges, church, dedication died, education, eight boys, eternal, example, Family, family life, forever, George, George and Olive Osmond, good meals, help others, impacted, Jesus Christ, knowledge, lare family, Like Father, Like son, live again, love, love at home, loving home, married, memories, nurtured, order, organization, Osmonds, osmonds second generation, parallel, passed away, point the way, prayer, regimentation, respect, righteous, role model, same way, showed me, Sons, spirit, spirit world, Suzanne Pinegar, tender, The Family, traditions, truth, watched him, worked hard | 2 Comments

Father’s Day – “Like Father, Like Son”

“Having been born of goodly parents”, I was blessed to be the third member of a family of eight sons and one daughter of George and Olive Osmond.  We grew up in the town of Ogden, Utah with fond memories of a wonderful family life.

My Mother, Olive, was so kind and tender as she nurtured us children.  She love to cook and taught us music in a most wonderful and loving home.  Her parents were both educators and my mother would have been too, but she fulfilled her first priority and married my father and had a large family.  Because she loved education, she asked my father to build a schoolroom in the attic of our home where she used her skills as a teacher and theologian to teach us children many truths.

My Father was my hero and my role model.  We called him “Father” out of respect and I wanted to be like him when I grew up.  I was by his side when he built, plumbed, wired, and remodeled homes as a great carpenter. I watched him and was by his side when he milked cows, hauled hay, irrigated the orchard and fields, or as we stamped and packaged postal items at the post office that he had.  Father also loved to sing.  I sat behind him while he was driving the car and as we sang together, he would sing in harmony with Mother.   That was how I learned to sing harmony.  Learning that skill truly impacted my life.   Father taught me how to fish, to hoe sugar beets and how to drive the tractor and haul hay.  He always involved my brothers and me in his work projects and led by example.  He always stood by us when the going got tough or was challenging.  You see, Father had been an army sergeant and knew how to lead men.  Several evidences of that training showed up in how he raised our sister Marie and us eight boys.

One example of that was when we got older and our home needed more bedrooms.  Father decided to build on to the back of our house and built what he called, a dormitory.  Yes, you are right, it was like an army barrack with seven military  metal framed army cots and blankets, foot lockers at the end of the beds, and open closets where our clothes needed to be neatly hung and arranged as there where regular inspections that occurred.  He knew how to lead and train military men in the army so like them, Father taught us in many of the same ways and how to have order.  Some neighbors had asked him if the way he was raising his kids wasn’t ‘regimentation’.  He would just smile and respond back saying; “I look at it as organization.”

I remember many times when he helped friends by serving them.  My Father and Mother were always doing things to help others.  They started the Osmond Foundation to raise money for deaf children, two of which were my older brothers.  This was a pattern of my father and I wanted to be like him,  “Like Father, Like Son.”  He was a hard worker and organizer and gave freely of his time in headed up several fundraising projects within the church and the community.

Like my father, I too, found and married the most wonderful girl in the world, Suzanne Pinegar, and she is my eternal partner.  Suzanne has blessed me with eight wonderful
sons.  As a father, I tried to raise them the best I knew.

I can look back and see a parallel in many of the same ways and traditions that I learned from my father.  Those patterns and traditions of life now exist among us as a family with our sons and their families.  Yes, they honor me and call me Father and they have learned to work hard and to never give up.  Yes, they also love

music and have excelled in it masterfully.  I told them to get “real jobs” and they did get good educations with a love to learn.  Yes, they love the out of doors like I did as a son and are all Eagle Scouts.  Seven of them so far have served full time missions and have returned and married.  Yes, they grew up in a home with respect, order, good cooking, love, and with religious convictions that honors our Lord Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father.  We learn from Jesus’s example that even what He did, was as His Father has done; “Like Father, like Son”.

This Father’s Day, I reflect back on my father’s life and how much he showed me by example the way to be and to become.  He taught us to be positive and to never give up when we were challenged and would say, “You can do it”.  He also taught us that “You can be what you want to become, if you become what you want to be.”  He was hard working yet a righteous man with a tender “marshmallow” heart”, as my mother would say, as he blessed his family and took us all to church.  He served in the bishopric and held several other church callings in which he blessed others.  We never had a meal together without first having a word of prayer and giving thanks and blessing the food.  We always had family prayer at night and even before every show that my family and I did later when we became entertainers.  When major decisions were made, we would counsel with the Lord together in kneeling family prayer seeking inspiration and giving thanks.  This was the way we grew up because it was the way he did.

 I remember the day my mother passed away and which was a hard thing and then not long after that when my father died.  It is not easy to see them go but it is those times when the knowledge of that they had taught us gave us the understanding that we would live again and be with them.  When my Father died, I was the first one to be by his side.  I saw him lying cold and still on his bed.  His body was there but my Father’s spirit wasn’t.  I shed some tears and held his hand as I offered a prayer of gratitude to my Heavenly Father.  I thanked Him for giving me the greatest earthly father I could ever have and for the good man that he was.  It was then that I honestly started to smile as I knew he was now once again with my Mother in the Spirit world.  I looked at him and said, “Father, save me a place, up there.”

Some day, I too, will graduate and do as my Father, my Savior, and my God have done, and live on eternally.  ”Like Father, Like Son”.

Alan Osmond
For The Family

By Alan on Mar 17 in Blog tagged caring, caring involvement, child's potential, clear standards, family life, father's primary responsibilities, fatherhood, fathering, governance of the family, heavenly parents, high ideals for men, Honor thy Father, influence, Key principles and practices, left to man's wife, moral behavior, nurturing environment, power in righteousness, primary responsibility, Sean E. Brotherson, son or daughter, teaching, the Church, the live of their children, the school, worthy of honor | Comments Off

Key Principles and Practices in Fathering

“Honor Thy Father”

From SINAI long ago rang a sacred invitation from  the God iof Israel.  “Honour thy father and thy mother”  (Exodus. 20: 12).

There is much to consider in this invitation and divine command.  A perspective of fathering that embraces the divine injunction to “honor thy father” suggests a set of high ideals for men in family life.  Indeed if men wish to receive honor in their efforts as fathers, then it is essential that they be worthy of honor.

Clear standards of moral behavior and caring involvement defines a father’s primary responsibilities in family life.  The teaching and governance of the family must not be left to a man’s wife alone, to society, to school, or even the Church.  To father a child is more than a biological act or fulfillment of a social role.  To father a child is to accept a divine calling, a moral stewardship, and a lasting commitment across generations.  A father’s calling is an eternal calling from which he is never released.

Fathers have the ability, for good or ill,
to exercise great power and influence in
the lives of their children and families.

Power alone, however, is not what a father truly needs, nor does he need only the ability to influence and direct a child’s life, thoughts, and feelings.  A father needs the power to bless his children.  Men do not bless by the mere exercise of power.  They bless only by the exercise of power in righteousness.  To be a holy figure in the life of a child, in the life of a family, requires an association with powers that exist beyond our own mortal abilities.  Power in righteousness comes only as we associate ourselves through prayer and sacred living with the powers of heaven.  “The powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.”  D&C 121: 36

The importance of fatherhood and in shaping men and children is linked to our

Heavenly Father’s divine plan of happiness.  The divine pattern for human development establishes that family life is the primary context for the unfolding of our eternal potential.  The journey that each child of God undertakes in the plan of salvation is a developmental journey, a journey of progression, designed to help us acquire spiritual knowledge and character virtues that allow us to grow toward perfection.

Fathers may engage differing aspects of care and involvement at different developmental periods in a child’s life, such as playmate and nurturer during infancy and interpreter of the outside world during middle childhood.  The importance of fathers nurturing and supporting each child’s potential through each phase is affirmed; that the bonds of parents and children are revealed “in family relationships, in attributes and virtues developed in a nurturing environment, and in loving service.”  As fathers practice these essential principles in their lives and relationships, they fulfill their own potential and guide the rising generation toward achieving the divine potential that resides in each of us as “a beloved spirit son or daughter of Heavenly parents.”

Sean E. Brotherson
“Successful Marriages and Families”
For The Family

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By Alan on Jan 17 in Blog tagged alan, and Protect, Andy Williams, bond, brothers, Donny, duty, Families. George, family life, Father, Fathers, God, gospel, Jay, Jesus, jimmy, law-abiding, love, Marie, Merrill, mother, needs, nurture, Osmond, Osmond Brothers, parents, playing, proclamation, provide for, quartet, righteousness, sacred, spiritual, strong, television, Tom, Virl, Wayne | 3 Comments

“Fathers are expected by God and His prophets not only to provide for their families but also to protect them…. M. Russell Ballard

“… On a day-to-day basis, fathers can and should help with the essential nurturing and bonding associated with feeding, playing, storytelling, loving and all the rest of the activities that make up family life.”

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That’s what my father did with us as we were growing up!

This is a picture of my father, George Osmond, at NBC Studios in Burbank just being playful with us after we finished rehearsing and taping an Andy Williams TV Show.  Left to right is me, Alan, Merrill with Wayne at the right.  Jay is in front.

We were a barbershop quartet singing in four part harmony that took a lot of work, practice, and rehearsing.  Our father was always there with us to protect, support, comfort and play with us.  We had a family of eight boys, Virl, Tom, Alan, Wayne, Merrill, Jay, Donny, Jimmy, and one sister, Marie Osmond.

In “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Church leaders declared, “Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live.”

Parents can experience great joy by building a strong, loving home environment and teaching gospel principles, which can help their children lead righteous, happy, and productive lives. (See 3 John 1:4.)

Just like our Mother and Father have done, parents can teach their children formally during family home evening and other family gatherings, such as daily family prayer and scripture study or at mealtimes. Teaching opportunities also come in unplanned moments as parents and children spend time working and playing together. Whatever the setting, the Lord will guide parents as they prayerfully seek to rear their children in love and righteousness.

Family Night was why we learned to sing songs and the reason to learned a song every week, so we could sing in at
Family Night!  Why we sang to earn money was to be able to help the hearing impaired like our brothers Virl and Tom and to raise enough money to send them on missions as missionaries which we did.  And regarding prayer, we never performed a show without first gathering together in a circle and saying a prayer of thanks and asking the Lord for blessing us that someone in the audience might know our love for each other and for the gospel of Jesus Christ and have the desire to know more about our Church and The Family!

Alan Osmond
For The Family